One wealthy, terminally ill real-estate entrepreneur has told his doctors he is determined to live until the law changes. “Whenever he wakes up,” says his lawyer, “He says: ‘What day is it? Is it Jan. 1 yet?'”
It’s a question driven out of the capacity for empathy, not the self-centeredness of youth: Why was I born where I was born? What fate
Is it wise, I asked, “to put our trust in strangers, or to love our enemies as ourselves? Would we advise our children to do so?” Then came a passage to which my daughter Sarah took great exception: “I cannot embrace this radical faith,” I wrote. “I feel no kinship with those who can cut short a human life without remorse; or with terrorists who target the innocent; or with adults who torment small children for the sexual thrill. I suspect no decent soul does either.”
Over the years you may have encountered snarky comments around the web about our presiding bishop’s pattern of doing embroidery in meetings. Katharine Jefferts Schori
As the deputy sheriff unlocked the cell doors and let the men out into the hall where we were locked in, the prisoners not knowing us, eyed us with suspicion. I held out my hand to Murray, and shook hands with him as the sheriff introduced us. I told him we had come to cheer and help him, and recommend to him a Friend who was his only hope now. He smiled and said, “This is new to me, I’ve never had anyone to visit me and pray with me before, and I’ve been in many prisons; but it’s too late now.